What's the deal?

I am officially banned from watching all game shows, as tonight I began to openly sob watching some woman named Tomorrow Rodriguez attempt to win a million dollars on Deal or No Deal. This is particularly vexing as I am not a regular watcher of Deal or No Deal, and am sort of grossed out by Howie Mandel's shaved head and weird lady parts goatee. But as Tomorrow got closer to her million dollar case, I completely lost my shit.

I don't know how I end up getting sucked into situations like this; I had a very similar situation once with an episode of the Family Feud, which ended with me bawling on my couch at twelve in the afternoon after the family won the big prize. Which I guess justifies my Deal or No Deal breakdown a bit-- if I get choked up when five people have to split $10,000, imagine how moved I would be by one woman getting a million.

I was, in fact, so upset by the whole thing that I had to leave the room and go take a shower, and subsequently missed the end. Did she win? Does anyone know? I kind of have to know now.

(Okay, I just looked it up on Google. She did win. Which is good. Because I would have felt like a supertard, crying over a woman that eventually won $400.)

You know, I just thought of something-- I think the Family Feud family was also named Rodriguez. So maybe I just have to limit myself to shows featuring non-Rodriguezes? Which will totally suck for me if A-Rod ever decides to go on Celebrity Jeopardy.

I'm going novelist on your asses

This morning, Jeremy sent me a cryptic and vaguely ominous-seeming e-mail that contained nothing but the link to NaNoWriMo, the write-a-novel-in-a-month website that I always mean to join, but never do, because I'm lazy and possibly, at this point, no longer talented, and would prefer it if I didn't have to do anything to draw attention to that very real possibility.

I don't know what it was, but something in that e-mail-- just the sight of the link in the body, or possibly the fact that Jeremy has Vulcan mind control skills that can manifest themselves in the form of a simple weblink-- made me say, you know what? It's time. I'm going for it.

I'm going to write an effing novel.

Or I'm going to try to, anyway. I don't know what it's going to be about (although please note: I know there's going to be a scene in which the main character hits and kills a deer with her car, so if any of you have first-hand knowledge about this, I would really appreciate some details, as I've never hit anything larger than a cat, over which I cried for days and days, but which did minimal damage to my car and did not prevent me from making it to the convenience store where I had been headed to buy a candy bar), and I don't know how far I'll make it, but I figure if I make it to day three, and write 20 pages, that's 20 more pages than I've written in the last four years.

Is there anyone out there that wants to do this with me, or that's already planning on doing it? If so, please let me know, so we can be writing buddies and I can write to you to complain about how I'd really rather be playing Guitar Hero and not doing anything with the seven years of education I spent learning how to write a novel in the first place.

Now of course, everyone must suffer for their art, and in this case you're going to have to suffer, too, because my blog postery will likely diminish as I get more involved in this (assuming, that is, that I make it past day three, which I judge to be the biggest stumbling block of all, since by day three I'm really going to need a plot, and I don't really have one of those in mind just yet). But in the meantime, you can check on me here, and I can always use some encouragement, so feel free to drop me a line reinforcing your belief in my awesomeness.

And if I do puss out and don't finish, I'll let you know-- I'm not going to be one of those people who just poops out on something and never acknowledges it again (see: Swing State-- thanks for saving my ass there, Matt!). But hopefully I'll be able to pull it off-- and who knows, maybe I'll get back some of my writing mojo and get back in the groove for good. And if nothing else, all this typing will really limber up my fingers for Guitar Hero solos on hard.

Name this tune:

Okay. So there's this song that I hear maybe once a year-- always somewhere totally unacceptable to jump up and down in, let alone to start quizzing people about their musical knowledge. Like the grocery store, or a bar in Canada once (they frown on jumping in Canada). I have no idea what this song is, or who sings it, but I love it so much. But every time I try to get to the bottom of the situation, the same scenario plays out:

Me: Oh, my God! It's the Cut the Bone to Me song! Do you hear it?

Whoever I'm With: The what to what song?

Me: "Cut the bone to me! Cut the bone to me!" That's what he's saying in the chorus. I think?

WIW: That doesn't even make any sense. How do you cut a bone to someone?

Me: I guess I don't know.

WIW: That sounds dirty.

Me: For real, it's going to be over soon, just listen.

WIW: I don't even hear anything.

Me: It's on the PA system! Just listen! Shut your gob and listen for five seconds and then you will tell me who sings this song!

WIW: This song sucks.

Me: No, it does not! It is awesome and elusive, like a monarch butterfly or El Chupacabra!

WIW: Isn't this just "Collide" by Howie Day?

Me: NO, IT ISN'T EFFING "COLLIDE" BY HOWIE DAY! I WILL KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T TELL ME WHO SINGS THIS SONG RIGHT NOW! KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND!

WIW: I think it's over.

Me: Mother effer.

I had this exact conversation with Ben in the Chesterland Giant Eagle on Sunday, when the song emerged for its annual peek-a-boo while we were in the checkout line. I was actually on my way back to produce to buy some pepitas (which is apparently what you call pumpkin seeds when they are naked and shell-less), and I came careening back up to the front of the store when I heard it, only to be shut down again (but to be fair, Ben doesn't recognize any songs, including many beloved children's rhymes and also "Proud to Be an American" by Lee Greenwood).

So I beseech you, if you are aware of this song, please put me out of my misery and tell me what it is, so I can buy it, listen to it seven hundred times, and then never have to be driven half-mad by it again. Here's what I know about it:

1. The chorus at least sounds like the phrase "cut the bone to me, cut the bone to me," although that admittedly does sound really dirty

2. It does sound like Howie Day singing, but it's definitely not "Collide". Who else sings like Howie Day?

3. It came out no later than July 2005, because the first time I officially remember hearing it was at the aforementioned very calm bar in Canada, and that's the last time I ventured up north

Please help me! The "cut the bone to me" part will be in my head for at least the next six weeks if no one can come up with the name...

Give us your sick

I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get sick for the last three or four months. My reasoning is simple: I want a day off work. But there is some sort of compulsion inside me that will not allow me to take a day off for no reason (and sadly, playing Rock Band in my underpants all day while Ben is at work apparently does not qualify as a "reason" in my muddled chain of thought), and so my only option is to become sick-- not death flu sick, but just sick enough to allow myself to remain on the couch all day, reading old Entertainment Weeklys and watching "A Real Chance at Love" on VH1.

But apparently, I have developed the immune system of some sort of invincible god, as nothing-- not hand-shaking, not standing too close to someone who is apparently about to cough up their liquefied innards, not glass-sharing with a confirmed tuberculosis sufferer-- can penetrate its defenses.

There are several explanations for this:

1. I am an invincible god!

2. It's the effing vitamins!

3. Too much salad?

But whatever the reason, it's keeping me from my end goal of lying about all day in a low-level state of crappiness. And this has to end, now, because I simply can't continue going to work and sitting among the throng of totally viral co-workers with their sneezing and their tissues and their raspy coughs without getting to experience any of the benefits!

So if you are sick right now, I ask that you please breathe into an envelope and mail it to me, stat. I promise you, if this works, I will thank you from the bottom of my achy, couch-supported, legally earned day off bones.

Words I have decided to use less often as a part of my lifestyle improvement program:

Awesome
Dude
Gay
Retarded
Janky
Douchebag
Fucking

I have not yet decided, however, what I will do if I encounter an fucking awesome gay retarded dude carrying a janky douchebag.

Catwoman Begins

My cat Mamie, perhaps sensing my impending transformation to Fit and Healthy Thirtysomething and fearing that my days of sloth-- and therefore my days of allowing her to lie on my chest for hours on end while I shovel fistfulls of Cheez-Its down my gullet-- are coming to a close, has decided to attempt to sabotage me the only way she knows how-- by peeing on everything.

I take that back-- she has, in the past, broken out what must be considered the Fat Man and Little Boy of the cat arsenal, the Giant Flying Boogery Ear Stink, which afflicted her for about a year in Wilmington. While a successful surgery was performed to eliminate this scourge on my personal life ("Hey, want to come over and sit on my furniture, which is covered with gelatinous wads of goo that smell like a homeless man's belly button?"), I think Mamie sort of realized that with great suffering came great amounts of petting, and filed that away in her brain.

And I have to say, the Random Pee Bomb is nearly as effective as the Boogery Ear Stink-- it certainly smells worse, although this time Mamie has been civil enough to contain the battle to the basement, specifically to a woven rug that Ben put under the laundry table. And since it's so centrally located, it doesn't have the visual wallop of the B.E.S., which could be flung in a six foot arc in any direction (which was really, really hard to explain to my landlord upon relocating). But the R.P.B. is more of a psychological weapon-- every whiff penetrates straight into your brain with the ominous message "Say goodbye to your friends, kemosabe. You're the cat lady now."

Especially horrifying about this is that the woman who lived in our house before us was a cat lady; according to our neighbor Frank, who somehow knows everything about everyone in our neighborhood, there were, at one time, thirteen cats living in our house. Some might say that this could be the cause of Mamie's problems-- that she's simply retaliating against the ghosts of Pee Bombs past.

But I have a more terrifying theory: what if the house makes you a cat lady? What if, when she moved in, the old owner was a young, vibrant, vitamin-taking hipster? And the the house mugged her with its cat ladyness, and all the sudden her clothes all had a vague funk and she wanted to prop cross stitched pillows on every available surface?

If this happens to me, consider this my will. You will know what has become of me. And do not destroy Mamie-- she's but a mindless pawn in the house's deadly game. But I beseech you, please, before anyone comes over to mourn me as I stare at them from behind bifocals and a fur-smeared, teddy-bear appliqued sweatshirt with mock turtleneck underneath, please at least destink my basement. And scan it for signs of Boogery Ear Stink. Just in case.

A million strong and growing

As part of my new Stop Getting Old and Fat at an Alarming Rate routine, I've begun taking vitamins every day-- specifically, a B vitamin in the morning (for energy), a multi-vitamin at mid-day and calcium at night, so I don't end up like Sally Field in my early sixties, vaguely famous and hawking Boniva. Because vitamins are so widely praised, I figured I would immediately become invincible and probably be able to see through walls.

Sadly, though, all they've really done thus far is turn my pee a brilliant chartreuse color (which is interesting, because the ONLY thing I remember about health class in high school? Is the health teacher, a Russian-looking, perm-wearing man-woman, telling us that vitamins were just "expensive pee," because anyone who was living a decent life was getting all the vitamins they needed from their food. I remember this pronouncement coming on the same day that we watched the slides of people with diseased privates on a screen in the home-ec room, but I don't really see how those two topics could be related). While the neon pee is certainly interesting, I'm feeling a little let down by the whole vitamin industry-- was I really getting enough vitamins through my food after all? Are there that many vitamins in a plain Burger King hamburger?

Maybe it's too late for the whole vitamin scene. I'm aging at a rapid and disconcerting pace, despite my latest attempts to camouflage it with bold eye makeup (note: people with poop brown eyes? Aren't really good candidates for bold eye makeup), and there might be nothing I can do about it. The fact of the matter is, soon I will be thirty, at which point the people on my street will stop categorizing me as young, which means I'll probably lose the privilege of letting my dog poop wherever I want in their front yards.

I guess I thought the vitamins would counteract this somehow, and I would wake up young-looking and scary toned, like Madonna (who clearly got where she is today because of Target brand multi-vitamins). But I'm getting puffier and wrinklier by the day, with no possible recourse but to embrace it and start shopping in the Cherokee section at Target.

I don't think I'm going to stop taking the vitamins, though. The freaky pee is like a portable version of a laser light show.

Because being friends in real life is simply not enough...

...come be my Facebook friend! Because never looking at my MySpace page was getting to be too much work.

Seriously, though, I've only been on it for a few minutes, but it seems weirdly... fun? Whereas MySpace made me feel old and dried up inside.

So anyway, search me on there and let's buddy up! And if you're not on there, you should join. Every second you don't join is a second that a kitten's cries pierce the night on a sludgy moonlit river bank.

(Look, people pressured me into joining, and I'm here to do you the same kindness. So DO IT!)

Gateway to Fame

This is my very first blog post from my brand new Gateway computer, which I just assembled (myself! Because I'm a can-do kind of gal) and which, for the first time ever in my long and storied history of hooking up computers (as opposed to hooking up with computers, which would be weird and sort of dirty) had Internet access immediately upon start-up. Normally, I have to fist fight the computer to make this happen, or perform a series of tasks like building a small fire in my living room and burning one of my favorite stuffed animals as a sacrifice.

And I have to tell you, I have high hopes for this computer. Because I have decided to pretend that the only reason I have not written the great American essay collection since leaving grad school is because of my old laptop, which I was given by my parents upon graduation. I never really got used to writing on the laptop, and therefore used it pretty much for listening to music and playing ridiculous amounts of Tumble Bees.

But things are different now. Now, I've got the whole desktop thing going on (with a stupidly large flat screen monitor in HD, which seems sort of unneccessary when typing out blog posts that are rapidly turning out to be mundane), with the keyboard where it should be and the mouse and the speakers and the whatnot.

Point is, I now officially have no excuse not to write. So please, if I haven't pumped something out by Christmas, someone come after me. Because this computer is too nice to waste on Tumble Bees.

Farewell, sweet Pentium

Just to explain the bitter, nuke-u-lar winter type silence that has fallen over my blog of late-- this past Monday, around one in the morning, my computer began making a sort of wheezing noise that I normally associate with our dog when it has a particularly vigorous booger infestation. So I got out of bed and put it in sleep mode, and... and... it never woke up.

I've been futzing around with it for the last few days, trying to coax one more evening worth of life out of it before I consign myself to the bitter task of computer searching so that I can rescue my (you all must admit) insanely awesome collection of one-hit wonders from my hard drive so that they can live to craft another decade of mega CDs. (Because where, I ask you, where, am I going to get another copy of "Brand New Pair of Rollerskates" by Melanie Safka? Answer? Effing nowhere.) But I can't even get it to go into safe mode-- it just keeps taking me back to this scary black screen that looks vaguely DOS-y.

So anyway, until I get that situation resolved, my blog might be MIA-- again. Those of you who are particularly interested in seeing it up and running can feel free to send donations to my Pay Pal account, so that I can save up and get the super sweet computer that can burn pictures right onto the CDs I make. Because nothing accentuates a CD full of crap like an awesome picture of me making guns with my fingers!

Okay, for real...

...am I alone in my paralyzing fear of Sarah Palin?